search for it - notice it - see it.

This morning my heart is full, not because everything is perfect, right or even good - but because I am choosing to linger in the love I know is sure and envision the beauty I know exists.  This choice is not spontaneous, sappy or even sincere - but conscious and calculated.  It is an effort to rise above the common place cloud of confusion, pain and fear - to slow down, savor and really see.  To see through eyes that detect the delicate details of beauty in the seemingly un-beautiful.  Eyes that seek the sincere, value the vulnerable and notice the novice.  Eyes that see past the plaster, the skin, the safe - eyes that hold the beauty of the raw, stripped and stained.  In this life it seems very few things are forever, sure or even secure - minds change, problems progress, hate hovers and shit happens.  But - there is so much beyond that, it seems we just have to search for it - notice it - see it.

I see beauty in the subtle, squinty wrinkles around my fathers bright green eyes - put there by the sun he never shied away from and evidence of his unshielded thirst to experience the unexperienced.  I see beauty in the stark white hair of my wise, regal grandfather and the calluses of my never idle, always tending - teaching - trusting grandmother.  I see beauty in the curly, crazy hair that dresses my sweet mommas head - for it reminds me of the zing, passion and creativity that oozes from her very being.  I see beauty in the simple heart my sister once carved into her left knee - for it reminds me that even scars can create unexplainable beauty.    

A tall, handsome, honorable man once told me, "Say what you feel - not what you should."  I have spent many hours trying to organize what I feel - what I feel is a tricky thing.  It changes just like the ups and downs of the rolling sea.  But, in spite of all the ups and downs one thing remains constant, and that is the warmth that wells deep within my heart with the appreciation, creation and contemplation of beauty.  Beauty that is not common or quantifiable, but beauty that is found in the details, the ugly, the honest, the raw - the vulnerable.  There is no telling what horrors tomorrow could bring - but we can be sure that some beauty will exist today, tomorrow and forever - we just have to search for it - notice it - see it.